WASHINGTON — The Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment is testing unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) as part of the service’s latest competition, with the final list of winners to be announced this week.
The 2nd Cavalry, the Army’s largest combat formation in Europe, has been testing over 17 UGVs as part of the service’s xTech Edge Strike Ground competition. The biggest lesson learned, one senior leader told reporters Friday, has been navigating the varied costs of UGVs against what the Army needs.
“I think what we found is it’s actually harder to break into the unmanned ground vehicle market because the platforms vary at price points that are a little bit outside of the reach of a brigade combat team level,” Maj. Andrew Kang, 2nd Cavalry Regiment fire support officer, said. “I think there are some platforms that are a little more attritable, you know, at the $500 to $1,000 range, and then you’re seeing it expand all the way up to potentially million dollar platforms.”
Kang explained that through the 2nd Cavalry’s own testing and working closely with its Ukrainian counterparts fresh off the battlefield, they’ve determined that there are a plethora of use cases for UGVs. These include sustainment and logistics operations, medical evacuations, attaching the robots with sensors to serve as “decoys” for the enemy, and sending the robots out with explosives to harm the enemy.
With this, Kang explained, some of the robots must be “purpose built” which comes with a bigger price tag and can seem nearly pointless if the robot is going to get blown to pieces by an adversary. In that realm, Kang said, they still have a long way to go in finding a bespoke solution at a lower price point.
But for now, Kang sees the most promise in UGVs being used in “breaching” scenarios where “instead of having a manned formation go to the breach point, we could potentially load an explosive on on an RC [remote controlled] car-type platform and drive that, mitigating risk to soldiers.”
Col. Donald Neal, commander of the 2nd Cavalry, echoed Kang’s sentiment, saying that while it would be nice to have bespoke UGV solutions at a lower price point, realistically the Army is more concerned with attributable systems at this time.
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“I mean, to be honest — and I’m not saying this to be smart aleck — but I think the cheaper the better, because in most uses for unmanned ground vehicles, we know we’re going to put them in a position where we’re not going to recover them,” Neal told reporters Friday.
“We need them to be as cheap as possible. But, we will also need them to be as scalable, tailorable to fit the mission specific requirements. So to get something that’s super expensive, that has this exquisite capability on it and costs $1.3 million really doesn’t do us a whole lot of good,” he added.
The first 17 finalists of the xTech competition were chosen earlier this year, and up to five final winners will be selected on March 13 by senior leaders in the Defense Department, Army — hence where the 2nd Cavalry comes in — and NATO subject-matter experts. The winners will each receive $275,000 and “may be considered for addition to the Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate (G-TEAD) Marketplace, making them eligible for potential follow-on agreements and contracting opportunities,” according to the Army.
The xTech competition is far from the first time the Army has attempted to award contracts for ground autonomy platforms. For example, the Army scrapped its Robotic Combat Vehicle program for the second time in line with its transformation initiative last spring, and months later it asked industry for cheaper vehicle options under a new name, the Unmanned Ground Commercial Robotic Vehicle. The service has yet to announce any further movement on the new program.